Truth

"There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings."
-Dorothy Thompson

Keep your heart

“Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry, your body from abuse. Live simply; expect little; give much. Think of the other person; forget yourself. Always do as you would be done by.”

Let Love Be Real

"Let love be real, in giving and receiving,
without the need to manage and to own;
a haven free from posing and pretending,
where every weakness may be safely known.
Give me your hand, along the desert pathway,
give me your love wherever we may go:
as God loves us, so let us love each other,
with no demands, just open hands and space to grow.

Let love be real, not grasping or confining,
that strange embrace that holds yet sets us free;
that helps us face the risk of truly living,
and makes us brave to be what we might be.
Give me your strength when all my words are weakness,
give me your love in spite of all you know:
as God loves us, so let us love each other,
with no demands, just open hands and space to grow.

Let love be real, with no manipulation,
no secret wish to harness or control;
let us accept each other's incompleteness,
and share the joy of learning to be whole.
Give me your hope through dreams and disappointments,
give me your trust when all my failings show:
as God loves us, so let us love each other,
with no demands, just open hands and space to grow."

-from donec requiescat in te

A Fransiscan Benediction

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war,So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in the world. So that you can do what others claim cannot be done to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

Fuller expression

"The Psalms defy our notions of profane and sacred, proving that everything we feel, witness, do unto others, and have done to us is acceptable subject matter for conversing with the Divine. They invite us to bring every part of ourselves into our houses of worship. If we omit expressions of faith lost, of rage, of disdain, and of the desire for revenge, we leave parts of ourselves at the door."
-Kari Jo Verhulst

Solitude and Silence: a practical outworking

Monday is my sabbath. Nothing is scheduled for Mondays. If there are emergencies I respond, but there are surprisingly few. My wife joins me in observing the day. We make a lunch, put it in a daypack, take our binoculars and drive anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour away, to a trailhead along a river or into the mountains. Before we begin our hike my wife reads a psalm and prays. After that prayer there is no more talking - we enter into a silence that will continue for the next two or three hours, until we stop for lunch.

We walk leisurely, emptying ourselves, opening ourselves to what is there: fern hsapes, flower fragrance, birdsong, granite outcropping, oaks and sycamores, rain, snow, sleet, wind... When the sunor our stomachs tell us it's lunch time, we break the silence with a prayer of blessing for the sandwiches and fruit, the river and the forest. We are free to talk now, sharing bird sightings, thoughts, observations, ideas - however much or little we are inclined. We return home in the middle or late afternoon, putter, do odd jobs, read. After supper I usually wirte family letters. That's it. No Sinai thunder. No Damascus Road illuminations. No Patmos visions. A day set apart for solitude and silence. Not-doing. Being-there. The santification of time.

-Eugene Peterson (from Cure for the Common Life by Max Lucado)

Community Again

Community is first and foremost a gift of the Holy Spirit, not built upon mutual compatibility, shared affection, or common interests but upon having received the same divine breath, having been given a heart set aflame by the same divine fire, and having been embraced by the same divine love.

-Henri Nouwen

Curious

You still shall tramp and tread on endless round
of thought, to justify your action to yourselves,
weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave,
pacing forever in the hell of make-believe
which never is belief.

T. S. Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral.

Wanting God

That's when I want you - you knower of my emptiness, you unspeaking partner to my sorrow. That's when I need you, God, like food.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Small things

"Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul, which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or hellish creature." - C.S Lewis

Worship

"Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin." - William Temple

Unusual

Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty both so ancient and so fresh, yea too late came I to love thee. And behold, thou wert within me, and I out of myself, where I made search for thee: I ugly rushed headlong upon those beautiful wings thou hast made. Thou indeed wert with me; but I was not with thee: these beauties kept me far enough from thee: even those, which unless they were in thee, should not be at all. Thou calledst and criedst unto me, yea thou even breakedst open my deafness: thou discoveredst thy beams and shinedst unto me, and didst cast away my blindness: thou didst most fragrantly blow upon me, and I drew in my breath and I panted after thee; I tasted thee, and now do hunger and thirst after thee; thou didst touch me, and I ever burn again to enjoy thy peace.

St. Augustine: Confessions.

Wow

"He selected 12 and trained them in a new way of life. He sent them to teach everyone this way of life. Some would believe and become practitioners and teachers of this new way of life, too. Even if only a few would practice this new way, many would benifit. Oppressed people would be free. Poor people would be liberated from poverty. Minorities would be treated with respect. Sinners would be loved not resented. Industrialists would realize that God cares for the sparrows and wildflowers - so their industries should respect, not rape, the environment. The homeless would be invited in for a hot meal. The kingdom of God would come - not everywhere at once, not suddenly, but gradually, like a seed growing in a field, like yeast spreading in a lump of bread dough, like light spreading across the spreading across the sky at dawn.”
- A Generous Orthodoxy

Count to Ten

“In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.” - Psalm 4:4(NIV)

Us and Others

"He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more. He overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it. When our virtues become more mature, we shall not be more tolerant of evil; but we shall be more tolerant of infirmity, more hopeful for the people of God, and certainly less arrogant in our criticisms."
-C.H. Spurgeon

Train yourself to think about what is...

Train yourself to think about what is...

• true (not speculation or assumption);
• honorable (assume the best first);
• just (we are objects of mercy ourselves);
• pure (untainted by gossip or slander);
• lovely (whatever reflects the glory of Christ);
• commendable (an evidence of God's grace at work),
• excellent (find what's right — and not just what's wrong — in this circumstance)
• praiseworthy (there is always something for which to thank God)

...see Philipians 4:8

Your Words

An old man said, "One man is thought to be silent, and yet his heart judgeth and condemneth others, and the man who acteth thus speaketh continually; another man speaketh from morning till evening; and yet keepeth silence, that is to say, he speaketh nothing which is not helpful."

The Paradise of the Fathers.

Sitting on the Fence - Leunig

Come sit down beside me
I said to myself
And although it doesn't make sense,
I held my own hand
As a small sign of trust
And together I sat on the fence.

The Invitation - Oriah Mountain Dreamer

"It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful be realistic remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

Philipians 1:9-11 MSG

"So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover's life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God."